


A Bar-illiant Business Plan

by soufflegirl91



Series: Souffle's 007 Fest 2020 Fancreations [27]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Felix needs more love, Gen, nobody let Bond become a croupier, retirement planning, terrible cocktail names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25337347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soufflegirl91/pseuds/soufflegirl91
Summary: After a very dull mission, James and Felix contemplate life after retirement.
Series: Souffle's 007 Fest 2020 Fancreations [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809892
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: 007 Fest Fancreations





	A Bar-illiant Business Plan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storm_of_sharp_things](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_of_sharp_things/gifts).



> For Felix Friday and “team up with another secret service” on the Classic prompt table. This is a prequel to chapter 1 of What Happens in Vegas and is an event referenced in Bond’s Retirement Plan. You don’t have to read those for this to make sense, but you should read them after if you enjoy this. 
> 
> No beta. If I once again missed off half of a sentence, please tell me :D 
> 
> For Storm, because she prompted this whole damn verse and now it's growing.

“How about private investigators?”

“Looking for what? Some rich trophy wife’s jewels? You’d get bored in a week, either shoot the husband or tell him that she’s sleeping with the gardener just to cause chaos.”

“...you may have a point. What, then?”

It had been a long,  _ dull _ mission. Four weeks of mostly just waiting around in Montgomery, Alabama _. _ James  _ hated  _ Alabama. With a passion. Luckily for him, so did Felix. Swamps, it seemed, were no man’s friend. Felix  _ technically _ shouldn’t have been working a domestic mission, but the FBI had seemed very happy to let someone else work with James and his “unholy terror of a handler.” Apparently, Q hadn’t made very many friends in the FBI throughout his intelligence career. 

“Hmmm, croupiers?” 

A long, dull mission, ending with a seamless capture and  _ no _ explosions. Their target was safely locked away waiting for interrogation, and James wasn’t booked on a flight back to the UK until tomorrow. Tonight, they could finally blow off the boredom…

…Or rather, that’s what they had  _ intended _ . Only, as soon as they’d got a table at the first reputable bar they’d found, they had realised that they were too  _ old _ and too  _ tired _ to stay up all night or look for some company. They were quite comfortable sitting in this cosy booth, drinking their way through the cocktail menu and throwing around ideas for what to do when they were both inevitably forced to retire. It wouldn’t be long, now. 

_ “You, _ work in a casino? No chance! You couldn’t keep away from the tables, and they don’t let you bet if you work there, you know.” 

“Well, that won’t do. And I certainly don’t want to open my  _ own _ casino. We could buy a yacht, open a charter firm?”

“James.  _ James. _ Mr Bond-James-Bond…”

“Yes?” 

“Why the  _ hell _ are all of your retirement plans centred around catering to rich, white people? Rich, white people are the  _ worst! _ Well. Except you. Most of the time.”

Oh.

“Oh.” 

“Oh, yes. Do you really,  _ really _ want to spend the rest of your working life as ‘the help’ or the person they yell at for not conceding to their obnoxious requests? You want to own the party boat they use to bring their underage models and their drugs into the country? Do you?”

“Well, no. No yacht, then?”

“No yacht.”

James wasn’t entirely sure when their retirement plans had morphed into a  _ joint _ retirement plan, but he had to admit that he enjoyed Felix’s company. The man was woefully heterosexual, but he was a good partner. Maybe having someone to spend retirement with would make the prospect a bit less awful?

“Another round? It’s my turn to buy. What’ll it be?”

“I’ll take a... Christ on a  _ stick _ , where do they  _ find _ these names?! ‘Corn ‘n’ Oil’? The fuck  _ is _ that?!”

“Well, we’re about to find out. One Corn ‘n’ Oil coming right up.”

That was how it started. The drinks came, the pair decided that the cocktail would really be better named a ‘Blackbeard’, and had then taken to ripping apart the entire cocktail menu and renaming all the drinks. When he woke up the next day, horrendously hungover for the first time in years, James couldn’t remember who had come up with the truly terrible twist of  _ Mutiny on the Bounty _ and suggested  _ Martini on the Bounty _ as a name for a bar, only that it was scrawled on a napkin next to his Walther on the bedside table. 


End file.
